Media Criticism & Chronicles from a Former Reporter

Veteran newsman, Dan Rather who was forced into early retirement after making his own mistake on 60 Minutes, says CBS News can’t just blame Lara Logan, her producers and the newsmagazine for its erroneous report on the terrorist attack on America’s Embassy in Benghazi.

“It’s in the nature of these large corporations that when the stuff hits the fan, they want to blame the correspondent. Whatever happened, and if there’s any blame, whatever blame there is, has to start at the top of the corporation and go through the leadership of the news division. It isn’t just Lara Logan.” — Dan Rather

“There is a difference between this and the trouble I got in at CBS News. We got into trouble, that is I and the other reporters, because we reported a true story. What we had was true. The difficulty with the Benghazi story is, as they now have acknowledged, the story was not a true and they stood by it for a long time.” – Dan Rather

Thing is, Dan, what you had WASN’T true. The document was a fake. And it was ferreted out as a fake pretty quickly. Just as a simple Google search would’ve killed this particular Benghazi story, a quick check by your staff would’ve shown that the letter was a fake.

Journalism Ends Here

Adam F. Hutton

I have a Master's degree in Political Science and a Bachelor's degree in Media Studies. I'm a journalist and political scientist who writes about politics and media at Politics Starts Here and Journalism Ends Here. I tweet from @adamfhutton and @JournalismEnds.